Second CSI newsletter published

Welcome to the Centre for Social Investigation eNewsletter. Please click on the individual items below or on the link at the bottom of the page to view the full newsletter.

New Research

New report on foodbank use in West Cheshire with the Trussell Trust and University of Chester. The report – entitled #stillhungry – explored in detail the reasons for people seeking emergency food from foodbanks and the duration of the income crises that prompt them to seek help using. The report attracted media coverage from national and local news outlets, including Church Action on Poverty, The Daily Mirror, and The Guardian, alongside interviews with local radio stations in Oxford and Cheshire.

Professor Anthony Heath and University of Manchester colleague Professor Yaojun Li published an article on the social mobility of ethnic minorities entitled Class Matters in the American Journal of Sociology.

Dr Valentina Di Stasio received a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to conduct a field experiment on the returns to education of different ethnic groups in the British labour market.

We are working on projects on attitudes to immigration in Europe with collaborators at the University of Manchester and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. We will be presenting findings at a conference at the British Academy (convened by Anthony Heath and Rob Ford) in November – get a preview of findings in this blog post and sign up here.

Events

CSI were very active during the European Social Survey conference, held in Lausanne in July. Anthony Heath presented papers on attitudes to immigration and on national identity and belonging with Silke Schneider. Lindsay Richards presented on subjective social status with Marii Paskov (for which there is an accompanying blog post) and on Muslim attitudes with Asma Mustafa.

We also had a busy time during the conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research, held in Oxford last month. The CSI team presented work on parental investment in children’s cognitive development, spouses’ class and female political party identification, psychological well-being in the UK, and Sunday sociality in the 1950s.

Elisabeth Garratt attended an event hosted by the APPG on Poverty entitled Foodbanks: From Crisis Response to Crisis Prevention.

The Centre for Social Investigation (CSI) is based at Nuffield College, Oxford University. The Centre aims to address contemporary social issues of public interest, carrying out authoritative research on central social issues which draws upon interdisciplinary expertise in economics, politics and sociology, and related disciplines. The Centre’s research is independent and non-partisan; as such, it has no political affiliation or leaning.